Okay, so there is this website that is collecting and organizing hard-to-find documents about the Bush Administration (Outragedmoderates.org). Great! Power to the people! Democracy in action!

Outragedmoderates.org makes the files available via P2P networks such as KaZaA and others and WIRED does up a big story on them (Downloading for Democracy):

While legislators in Washington work to outlaw peer-to-peer networks, one website is turning the peer-to-peer technology back on Washington to expose its inner, secretive workings.

Huh? This makes sense, why? Sure, you can use P2P networks to distribute these files, but why would you want to? As a matter of fact, this is a pretty asinine way to do it. From the instructions (Download for Democracy):

On the KaZaa and Soulseek networks, you can search for the "outragedmoderates.org" username, and then use the "browse user files" option to find the documents. All three networks allow searching by document; go to the Government Document Library for a list of the documents currently available, which provides their exact filenames. Note that outragedmoderates.org only guarantee the authenticity of documents downloaded from the usernames given above. [colors, emphasis, links in original]

Let me get this straight. I go to the outragedmoderates.org website, go to the "Government Document Library," look up the documents I want, ignore the fact that I could download them from the website, start a P2P program, enter a search for the document name and/or outragedmoderates.org user name, and then download the documents, remembering that if I don't download the documents from outragedmoderates.org I might be getting inauthentic files. Gee, how could anyone ever think that P2P isn't useful? As WIRED says,

Anderson [publisher of the site] didn't intend to make a statement by using P2P networks, but his use of the networks to deliver the data counters the usual government and entertainment industry arguments that P2P networks have no value, apart from stealing copyright works, and therefore should be outlawed.

Yeah. It sure counters those arguments. Why, HTTP would never be suitable for serving static documents from an existing website. And the distributed nature of a P2P network really makes sense when you're basically telling people to download the documents from a single, centralized provider.

There are legitimate uses and needs for P2P. Particular functions where it makes sense. This isn't one of them.

Bonus: Outragedmoderates.org, helpfully provides some links to providers of P2P software. Unfortunately, the first link the site provides isn't to a spyware-free version of P2P software. Thanks a lot.